How do you...make things?

[Grinner]

I have a bit of a creative issue.

I can't make anything.

I try to make lots of different things. I have the results of these wild-eyed ambitions scattered across the width and breadth of my drive, and I have plenty of high-level ideas of varying degrees of originality. However, when I open up RPG Maker or some other software, I simply don't know where to start. What I lack are the more essential details of such endeavors: basic setting, characters, and plot.

Perhaps I'm simply given to overthinking these, but how do you all handle them?

[Lethologica]

If you find out, let me know, I'm definitely stuck in the not-creating doldrums.

That said--make little things, basic things, bad things. Make things you think a 6-year-old would make. Artists need to start with "Hello World" too.

Practice making characters, plot outlines, settings, etc. The way you phrased it sounds like you had some awesome ideas for programs and now you're trying to design them top-down when you don't know how to write most of the modules, or how to fit them together. Ya gotta master your storytelling toolbox before you build an Eiffel Tower narrative.

Practice putting the elements of storytelling together in basic scenes. Quick, gimme a scene where two friends working at Starbucks argue about what they'll do together when their shift is over. Top-level plot and one aspect of the setting are predetermined, but that leaves plenty of creative work to tell a story.

The basic answer to your question is that you build your creative capability until it is equal to whatever it is you want to create.

[JBPuffin]

I'd give the same advice to someone wanting to learn to write as I would to someone in a slump, as I become at times. A famous mathematician once said that writing a proof involves times of doing something completely unrelated; the same is true for artistic work (proofs are a kind of art, after all). Go about your day, maybe make notes about interesting things that happen if you wish, but don't sit down and exercise your writing muscles for a while. At some point, you'll catch something - an idea, a start, and that's when you strike, throwing all your power behind this concept, no matter how foolish it may seem at the moment. Take a step back - and maybe it's not good. Totally fine. The point being, it's a baseline, a start, and sometimes that's all you need.

The doing something totally different can be something related in a sense - reading and researching other people's stuff is a source of inspiration, after all. It's not the only one, though. Once you've got an idea, however small, in mind, give it a form, using whatever technique you're most comfortable with. Build on it, adjust things that don't look quite right, and slowly, it'll look more palatable.

An example - the other day, I was minding my business, going for a walk, when I rubbed my fingers together. Almost immediately, I saw this picture of a person doing that same motion, and fire forming in their hand. Thus, Friction Amplification was born, a superhero power and a baseline for a Mutants and Masterminds campaign world that will never see play anytime soon. It came out of literally nowhere, as these things often do, and it's turned into something. That's the bizarre nature of creativity - it works on its own time.

I wish you the best of luck, Grinner.

[Thanqol]

Do a thing every day no excuses. For the first few months it'll be an application of willpower and then it'll become habit.

Even if it's crap. A crap creation is a promise to yourself to do better tomorrow.

[Jormengand]

Try making lots of different things. I'm not great at drawing, but I can paint up a model to look like it stepped right out of the setting it's from; I'm not great at designing video games but I can handle tabletop games like a raid leader handles whelps. I can't really write prose but I'm not the worst poet to grace the earth. Hells, my brother decided that he didn't want to write a story as extended prose so he wrote it up as though it were a play instead.

Also, decide why you want to make something. Do you want it to look cool, to make a point, to be something you can play a game on? Something interesting I learned when talking about Magic designers making flip cards: they didn't go "Here's a mechanic I thought up, what can we do with it," they went "Here are werewolves, how can we represent them?" If you're making something, think about what it's for, and that will inform your design decisions.

[Red Fel]

I can relate what I've learned with regard to writing, which I believe holds true for many creative endeavors (including creating setting, characters, plot, etc.). There are three lessons that I can convey to you, which may or may not help.

The first is, very simply, Do. Dive in and get started. Sit there, over your pad and pencil, or typewriter, or keyboard, and start doing whatever it is you're going to do. Wanting to do, planning to do, thinking about doing - none of that is enough. To quote Yoda, "Do. Or do not. There is no try." The same holds true here - until you actually sit down and get started on your task, it makes absolutely no difference what you want to do. Just paraphrase the sporting shoe slogan and do it.

The second is less simple: Abandon quality control. Just temporarily, mind you. Many people encounter what is commonly referred to as writer's block, and I have no doubt that you're suffering from a bit of that. I attended a lecture once, and the speaker vocalized a point that many creators think about, but fewer can put to words. That point is this: The creative head wears two hats, creator and editor. The creator produces work, and the editor refines it and filters out the rubbish. The problem is when you try to wear both hats at the same time; you end up dismissing your work before you can even put pen to paper. Thus, my second piece of advice is this: Write a crappy first draft. I mean, write at the top of the page, "Crappy1 Ideas." In doing so, you abandon any attempt at quality control - that will come later. Having set your standards aside for a moment, write down everything. And I mean everything. No matter how silly, no matter how absurd, no matter how obnoxious or repugnant, it all goes on paper. And you sit there and write everything in your brain until your pen has run out of ink or your brain has run out of cells, whichever comes first. After you do this, you can start quality control. And I guarantee you, while 90% of what you wrote may never see the light of day, the remaining 10% will be stuff you can use.

The third lesson is as simple as the first, and it is this: Don't stop. Once you've started, you've gotten over the hard part. Inertia is a very real thing; ask scientists. But just because you've started running in the race doesn't mean you've crossed the finish line. Creating is work. People actually do it for a living. Even if it's just a hobby, you need to devote yourself; if you're not passionate about creating, you're going to run out of steam in a snap. Keep at it. New idea? Write it down, integrate it into the setting. Find a plot hole? Go back, revise, fix it. Clever character concept? Work it in somewhere. You can stop at any time, but you can't guarantee that the work will continue without you. Be prepared to see it through to the end; devote a certain amount of time on a regular basis to making sure it gets done.

And that's it. Three lessons. But it all starts at the same place, putting one foot in front of the other. Creating is like walking, and you've got to walk before you can run, or fly. Step one is to simply start; the rest will follow, if your heart is in it.

1 You are free to use a different word. The lecturer used a much stronger four-letter word. The idea is the same; the word reminds you that you're not attempting quality control.

[Bard1cKnowledge]

Wow creativity
such creative, much art, very wow

in all seriousness, I find it best to start simple

And by simple i mean worry over every detail

Whenever i create a character for an RP, be it an in person thing or whatever, I like to think "Who is this dashing young man/woman? what are his/her goals? the flaws?"

I'm currently working on a story about four such characters in a Pathfinder setting. The group is an old ex-adventurer dwarf who runs a smithy who is coming out of retirement, a human who follows laws and rules to their literal meanings, a goblin who wants to set up a shop in a big city to sell alchemical solutions, and a very surly gnome monk trying to be a better person than he was before his training

Don't be intimidated by the size of the project is my advice, just take a deep breath and put that pencil on the paper. start with a line, end with art

[Grinner]

Thanks for responding, everyone.

This has been a lot to digest, but I've given what you all have written some thought. Unfortunately, I don't think game design lends itself all that well to some of the methods requiring rapid creation as practice...At the same time, there are certain elements creative practices do share.

For one, having the discipline to work through the more tedious segments of a creative process is critical. On that note, I think figuring out a creative process should be my next step, and that will require experimentation, I suppose.

[shawnhcorey]

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone has told me. All of us who are in creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is a gap. For the first couple of years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. Most people I know who do something interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all got through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one piece. It's only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take a while. It's normal to take a while. You just gotta fight your way through."

Ira Glass

Start small. Big projects are just a whole bunch of small projects combined together.

Practice techniques. Don't be afraid of spending time on the fundamentals. For example, at some time, most artists have created a sketchbook full of lines, straight lines, circles, curved lines. Once you have mastered the basic techniques, you can see better how to do a project.

[Winter_Wolf]

I'm what you might call old school, or maybe even archaic. No matter what the medium of my finished project, I simply must doodle/brainstorm on actual, physical paper. It's mandatory to my creative process, so don't feel bad if there's something that you think is a huge waste of time in your process and you cannot fathom why you have to waste time on this step when other people don't. They have their own huge waste of time thing that essential to their process. Not too many years ago I discovered that I was not in fact a visual learner, but actually a kinetic learner. That's why I retained the most information in the classes where my notebooks were filled with doodles, and the least info when my notebooks wee actually filled with notes. The act of moving my hands was what was making things click. It's probably why despite my best efforts none of my digital stuff even comes close to what I can do with physical media, regardless of whether it's writing or drawing or what have you.